Psychiatric Epidemiology and the “African Mind”: Quantifying Madness in Colonial Nigeria

Abstract

Matthew M. Heaton is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA. His research interests are in the history of health and illness, migration, and globalization in Africa with particular emphasis on Nigeria. He is the author of Black Skin, White Coats: Nigerian Psychiatrists, Decolonization, and the Globalization of Psychiatry and co-author of A History of Nigeria. In this paper, he aims to demonstrate the ways that colonial histories should impact our understanding of how psychiatric epidemiology has developed chronologically and spatially, using Nigeria as a case study.

Matthew M. Heaton est Professeur associé au département d'histoire de Virginia Tech, à Blacksburg, en Virginie (États-Unis). Ses recherches portent sur l'histoire de la santé et de la maladie, les migrations et la mondialisation en Afrique, en particulier sur le Nigeria. Il est l'auteur de Black Skin, White Coats : Nigerian Psychiatrists, Decolonization, and the Globalization of Psychiatry et est le co-auteur de A History of Nigeria. Dans cet article, il montre comment les histoires coloniales peuvent influencer notre compréhension de l'évolution chronologique et spatiale de l'épidémiologie psychiatrique, en utilisant le Nigéria comme étude de cas.